Sleep and Wellbeing - Version 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
How does sleep dysfunction contribute to psychotic experiences in individuals with non-affective psychotic disorders? A cross-sectional and longitudinal evaluation
IRAS ID
169468
Contact name
Sarah Reeve
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Sleep problems such as insomnia are common among individuals with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, and may contribute to the development and persistence of psychotic experiences such as hallucinations (e.g. hearing voices) and delusions (e.g. holding beliefs that others intend to cause you harm). A recent review of the literature concluded that studies investigating this relationship to date often suffer from imprecise characterisation of both psychotic experiences and sleep dysfunction, which limits further work in to how they may be related. The current study has two parts designed to investigate the relationships between different types of sleep dysfunction and psychotic experiences over time in a sample of individuals with non-affective psychosis, and also to explore the contribution of potential mediating factors. Part 1 will monitor the relationships between a variety of factors (including sleep, psychotic experiences, mood, quality of life, and perceptual and cognitive changes) over a three month period with a repeated-measures observational design. Part 2, a cross-sectional design, focuses on individuals reporting longer sleep times, an aspect of sleep dysfunction which has not been addressed by the research literature to date. Altogether, this study aims to advance our understanding of how sleep dysfunction contributes to psychotic experiences, and identify potential mediators of this relationship.
REC name
South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SW/0291
Date of REC Opinion
10 Nov 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion